300 for 30: Day 19

The women's temporary nonviolent psychiatric ward is secured by locked double doors. There is a common area with battered and stained furniture, a television with a pile of VHS tapes – I’d always wondered where they went after DVDs took over, I suppose this is it – scattered fashion magazines, coloring books, and crayons. The carpet is that multicolored, slightly nauseating variety popular in waiting rooms of all types.

There is a station for the nurses and techs, who are able to take a shortcut and cross over to the men’s side as well. They have a counter one can lean on when you irritably ask whether one’s medication is ready yet, or plead with them to be able to go out to the garden for fifteen minutes that afternoon, with escort.

Down the hall, which feels very long if one’s side effects cause drowsiness and very short if one is looking for places to pace, there are two meeting rooms, only one of which has clear windows to the outside and is of course usually locked, and everyone’s bedrooms that we each share with a roommate. The soundproofed, solid white isolation room with cameras is off to the side. It frightens me, too Arkham Asylum.

One of the fluorescent lights in the hall has a panel laid over it with a painting of blue sky and clouds. I’m embarrassed how much it helps.

The “sharps” closet contains personal items we can only use with supervision, like my iPod and Stacey’s crocheting (wooden hook, of course, metal would be banned outright for the duration), for a three-hour window each day. A tech has to open the closet and sign things out.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in kindergarten. Sometimes I feel like I’m in prison. Sometimes I feel like I’m at a sleepover that just goes on and on and on, where I’m not allowed to leave until Mom comes to get me, and she’s late.

300 for 30: Day 7

We had a yard sale today. To be more accurate, we participated as one table in a mega yard sale today. The Vientiane International School, which I attended from late 1996 to early 2000 - though they have a new, bigger campus now - holds one every year. My parents are moving from Laos to China and need to get rid of a lot of stuff. We spent several hours, spread over this past week, sorting out eight boxes' worth of old but good-quality flotsam.

The heartwarming thing about this yard sale, rather than an ordinary one, is that for the Lao people who come this is a major shopping extravaganza, a chance to get exotic foreign products without having to cross the border to Thailand. Laos is emerging from communism much the way China and Vietnam are, and though the markets are opening up many things are simply not available. The school charges shoppers entrance, and we still get what seems like hundreds of people looking for bargains. Today there were also bratwursts for sale, a variety of drinks and snacks, and pony/carriage rides. An enterprising coffee shop was giving out samples as well as selling cups of java, in those little paper cups designed for hot beverages that have butterfly-wing handles you unfold so they stick out. I've never seen those in the U.S. They're almost too cute.

Mom said I was giving people too much leeway in bargaining, but I figured the Prime Directive was to get rid of things rather than to make a big profit. Phi (Big Sister) Nu Kit, our cook/housekeeper, who was my nanny the first time we were here, was a tough bargainer as well, but she tends to indulge me in everything because she considers me her first child. I gave a steep discount to a family buying a bike helmet for their son, because I don't want to be responsible for him cracking his head open. I got this vision of him getting in a crash and dying, and his family weeping, "If only that rich foreign girl who spoke such good Lao had reduced the price by 20,000 kip!" (It's 8,000 kip to the dollar at the moment.)

I kept getting confused by the zeros, as I always do here, what with inflation. A lot of people are willing to pay in or get paid in the Thai Baht, it being a stronger currency. Nu Kit helped me with the accounting. The big, industrial fan periodically blowing on us often blew away bills, but we used an old keepsake box to collect them. We made about $200. Mom promises to buy me a black (or brown) trench (or pea) coat when we get back to the U.S. in July. I accepted that in lieu of a share of the cash.

There were a lot of beaming children, and one ecstatic expatriate who bought at least seven books, a great thing in a country with a paucity of good bookstores in any language, let alone English. We're donating the rest to an annual charity bazaar Mom has been affiliated with in the past. I hope people enjoy their purchases.